Henry's 5th Birthday Card

March is always a challenging time of year in the midwest. It seems like March brings the promise of Spring but the fulfillment of flu and cold season. This year followed true to form. Having managed to get through the whole year without sickness I finally got that horrible flu that had been rumored and feared around these parts. I battled headache, rib bending coughing fits, high fevers and stomach upsets from Monday evening through Friday. Finally Friday night I was able to rest and slept an almost solid twelve hours!  Today, Saturday, I'm trying to pick up the pieces of my life stopped in it's tracks.   Henry's birthday party is tomorrow and he's turning that wonderful age of 5. When I asked him how it felt to be five he said in typical Henry fashion, "I don't feel any different, just the same as always."  Then he asked me why he hadn't grown any taller. We had a detailed discussion of how he had grown taller but their measuring spot on the back of their attic door had slipped down an inch so Daddy had said to add an inch.   He use to be very into construction trucks and when I bought the stamp set from Your Next Stamp called "Keep on Trucking" I thought it would be perfect for him. That was last year though and this year he's into super heroes. Hence, the combo of superhero puppies from Clearly Besotted's "Caped Cuties: with the Keep on Trucking stamp set.  I added a secret compartment to stash some cash in as an extra surprise using MFT Channel Builder dies.

It's a slider card and that super puppy hero is having a fun ride on his favorite construction truck....can't blame me for trying to get that truck in there anyway right? When you  open the card you see just why our superhero was so tired....he saved the whole city the night before while still in his pj's!                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Wedding Cards

Well, I knew that we were entering wedding season in a while but I am not ready to go shopping for dress to wear to the weddings. I have gained so much weight after a heart procedure and limited exercise and medication that I am totally horrified and embarrassed at my body size right now. There that's out there....I'm at my all time weight gain...and am all time horrified....I am also working on healthy so no short cuts to dieting in any way for me. I'm riding my bike and the outdoor exercise is exhilarating. The weight results are not. I use to be able to instantly drop weight in my younger years but not now. I hate walking alone in this city with no lake. Anyway, wedding season...here are a few cards it necessitated so far with products I bought from Simon Says Stamp in preparation for this wedding season.

Both of these cards were
Made with Simon Says Stamp I think May card kit but I bought the items from the kit on my own individually and just the stamp set, Blissful Bloom and the Echo Park 6 x 6 pattern paper pack called Wedding Bliss. I used Waffle Flowers 5 x 7 rectangle die set, the Lacey one.

Here are two more wedding cards. I really had fun making all of these.

End of summer playdate with my craft room...welcome back to crafting....

Wow, I really did take the summer off from crafting and blogging! But the weather is looking fallish here with cool temps and all day rains. So I'm back in the craft room having a playdate! Here's the result from today: a fun play with some new and old items. The new: Honeybeestamp's Mermaid Song stamp set and Nuvo silver moonlight glitter embossing powder and the old: Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers and MFT cloud stencils with tumbled glass distress ink on Tim Holtz watercolor paper.

Two Tips: Cutting panels without waste from Bristol Smooth & Using Hero Arts Color Layering Stamps

Thought I'd also share two tips I used on the sea turtle card.

First on is for cutting Strathmore Bristol Smooth card stock with little waste.  I buy the large pad, I found mine at Hobby Lobby and bought it with a 40 % off coupon. It is 11 x 17 inches and has 24 sheets. With this size there is no waste if you plan to cut the sheets into 4.25 x 5.5 inch panels. Just cut the 4.25 from the 17 inch long side and you'll get exactly 4. Then cut each strip of 4.25 in half for the 5.5 inch side for 8 panels of 4.25 x 5.5.

Second tip: Figuring out the stamps to use for each layer on the legs of the turtle took me a while. When I had them figured out, using the back of the packaging diagram included with the stamps, I put each leg and head layer stamp onto an acrylic block. So one block had stamp layer two's stamps arranged on it in the shape of the turtle...forward legs near head and back legs at the far edge, and layer three had the same arrangement on a separate acrylic block. That way I could make a bunch of turtles without getting mixed up or having to figure it out each time I stamped a new turtle. I also arranged the mini ink cubes from lightest to darkest to match the order of stamping. The lightest cube was layer one which is one whole stamp of the turtle. Layer two adds some outline lines to the shell , head and legs and layer three is mostly the dotted parts on the skin using the darkest ink and it also adds the dark rings and edges to the shell. The shells were easy to keep track of so I didn't put them on the acrylic blocks. 

Hope this helps for the Hero Arts Color Layering Sea Turtle Stamp set and for cutting Bristol Smooth into panels without wasting paper. 

Hero Arts Color Layering Sea Turtle card for Father's Day: Husband card

Hey fellow card Crafters!

It's been a while but I'm trying to work on setting up my equipment to record videos and it's a learning process for me.

I did need to make a Father's Day card and although this one looks quite unconventional it fills my need to make cards personal for the recipient. I made two cards because the first one surprisingly turned out pretty good as my test run to figure out the inking process for the Layered Sea Turtle stamps from Hero Arts. Using a MISTI tool really helped but I don't think would have been necessary.

Products used:

Strathmore: Bristol Smooth
Hero Arts: Color Layering Sea Turtle Stamp set
Altenew Inks: Frayed Leaf, Forest Glades and Evergreen
Distress inks: Salty Ocean  and Peacock Feathers
My Favorite Things 6 x 6 paper pad Black & White Basics pack
Embossing Powder: Ranger White Super Fine
My Favorite Things: Essential Fishtail Sentiment Strips Dies
Nuvo Jewel Drops: Sea Breeze
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
Spectrum Noir: Sparkle glitter brush: Crystal Clear

I cut the Bristol paper into a 5.5 x 4.25 panel and ink "smooshed" the distress inks onto the center of the panel mostly using salty ocean and reserving the peacock feathers ink for accent splotches. I did use the distress water sprayer and that worked great to give me just the right controlled spray of water onto the ink before using some acetate pieces to dab it onto my panel (aka smooshing).

I used the altenew inks in the order I listed them above to make the turtles and cut them out by hand close to the images using a black marker to darken the cut edges.

The sentiment was made from basic black card stock die cut with the fishtail strip dies and stamped with Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing ink using a sentiment from the stamp set. I heat embossed this using Ranger White Embossing powder and my heat tool to melt the powder. I cut a strip of black and white paper from the 6 x 6 paper pad and glued the turtles, strip and sentiment down using Nuvo glue. That glue is great by the way.

I glued the panel down to a top folding 5.5 x 4.25 Neenah 110# card stock in white and on the one card I used that corner rounder chomper tool to round the edges.

Lastly, I couldn't resist adding some shine so I added a simple embellishment of jewel drops to add to the water look and dabbed the water splotches lightly with Spectrum Noir: Sparkle glitter brush: Crystal Clear..

Playing again with #mftstamps Sketchy Flowers Card Kit. I've only bought a few card kits and this one is perfect! I'm having so much fun with it! Please ignore the puppy photobombing this shot in the background!

Sketchy Flower Card Kit: 1st Card

Why don't I put supplies away as I use them in my craft room. That is the source of the chaos that eventually surrounds me as I work away on any project. The more supplies I use the smaller my work space becomes. For example, yesterday the My Favorite Things Sketchy Flower Card Kit arrived. I opened the kit after work in my then clean and orderly craft room. 

Hours later I came back into the craft room to take just a last look before bed. That's when it started. I had to try the stamps. That resulted in a bunch of ink pads being brought out and spread around one side of the desk. Later I needed to figure out the paper. That resulted in paper being spread out. Finally I decided to die cut the stamps...more supplies out and lastly I decided an embossing folder was all I needed to add dimension to my card. 

By this time I'd forgotten it was late, that I was only going to try the stamps and that I needed to get up early the next morning. When the card was finished my memory returned! Sleepy morning here....but am loving the first card from this kit and how fast it came together!

#mftstamps